End of the year

It's time to say goodbye to 2016 ... and a happy goodbye it is!  While this year has been the toughest since we've been here, there were a lot of good things that happened this year.  So in order to focus on them, here's the best of the year!

- We have really great employees.  Dependable, cheerful, and help you get cattle in when you call.  Good friends and good neighbors!  They have really gone above and beyond this year.

- We also have really great families.  My parents live down the road and Kris' just an hour away.  They all have also been farmers for 30+ years, so they have lots of good advice and conversation.

- We have a great school and community.  People always want to come and tour, ask us to come and speak to them about farming, and even make agriculture part of the educational curriculum.  We love it.  We'll be out and kids will say hello to me. My kids will say, "How do you know them?" Depending on whether they call me 'Carla' (swimming lessons) or 'Mrs. Wardin' (schools), I can tell them.

- Our weather has been superb.  Wonderful summer, warm fall, and so far a super mild winter.  I love Michigan!

- Kris can leave sometimes.  It's nice to not worry about your business for a few days, and it's even nicer when no one calls because nothing goes wrong!  This is not something every business owner gets to enjoy, and it's again due to great people.

- We have support to help us in our business.  Thanks, vets, nutritionists, custom harvesters, cattle haulers, etc!

Here's hoping for a wonderful 2017 for all of us!  Thanks, as always, for reading.

Totally normal picture of us standing in the pasture dressed in regular clothing. Just kidding.  This has happened twice in our life when I insist on doing this in the five minutes we have in the summer and it results in an odd photo. It was also incredibly windy, and this is the one picture where I don't appear to be completely bald. Even the cattle are perplexed.

Want to know more about the farm?  Like the page on Facebook, on Twitter @carlashelley, or sign up to get the blog by email - the form is on the right side of the page.

Headed into winter

What a month!  We had the annual Michigan Farm Bureau meeting, where Kris was on the policy development board.  We traveled to see my siblings in Kansas and Oklahoma, where we did another Team Chocolate Milk race and visited a farm with goats and chickens!  (I fed a goat and held a chicken.  Two firsts.)  On the farm, we're making changes all the time, as we head into winter.

One of the biggest - the heifers are all set up with the feed pad:



But this week when we got our first snow, they got SUPER excited and got out.  When it was just Kris and me getting them in, it seemed really hard, but our neighbors, team members, and my parents all came out, and they were safe back home in no time.



As we head into the Christmas season, I'd like to express how thankful I am for all of my readers, near and far.  Thanks for reading! (And for those of you who came to chase cows, thanks, too!)

If you'd like more frequent updates, feel free to follow me here, on Facebook.